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Epiphanies
Kathy Burton
Christ Covenant MCC
Decatur, Georgia
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Mark 9: 2-9

Copyright © 2006 by Kathy Burton. Permission granted for non-profit circulation with attribution of author and venue. Other rights reserved.

Today is the last Sunday in the season of Epiphany. We have been reading the gospel of Mark, which has four epiphanies, when Christ’s identity is dramatically and specifically revealed to humans. First was the star that guided the magi to the manger; Jesus’ baptism, when God first publicly affirmed Jesus as the Christ; today’s event, the transfiguration, where the disciples saw Jesus in his heavenly form; and finally, at the foot of the cross, after Jesus’ death, when the Roman Centurion exclaimed, “Truly, this was the son of God.”

As you know, each gospel writer told the story of Jesus from a particular point of view. One of Mark’s main points was that humans can’t truly know Jesus until after his death, and we can never completely understand the ways of God. To help make that point, Mark used the disciples to represent all humans, who, try as they might, could not completely understand Jesus, even though they heard him teach and witnessed his miracles daily. So the disciples almost always came off looking like total buffoons. They never really got it. They abandoned Jesus in the Garden when he was arrested, Peter denied ever knowing him, and not one of the twelve, in Mark’s account, was at the cross. Only his women followers were with Jesus when he died.

In today’s passage, and those passages surrounding it, the disciples were especially dimwitted. In the chapter before this one, Jesus fed four thousand people with seven loaves of bread and a few fish. Then in the boat, on the way home, the disciples started to panic because they were hungry and forgot to bring any bread. Jesus looked at them with amazement and frustration and said, “Why are you talking about not having bread? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? Do you not remember what I did five minutes ago? Do you still not understand?” [“Nope.”]

Maybe Jesus thought they needed something a bit more dramatic: a picture version of his divinity. So he took Peter, James, and John up to a mountaintop. On the way he stopped to heal a man who was born blind. I can just imagine Jesus looking over at his disciples while he was restoring this man’s sight and thinking,“Guys, do you get the significance here? He was blind. Now he can see.”

When they got to the peak, Jesus revealed to them his essence, his spirit. Mark says his clothes turned whiter than any human could bleach them, and his body was transfigured into its spiritual form, the way he looked in heaven, the way he would look at the resurrection, and when he returned to earth at the end of time. Jesus performed magic right before their eyes. Not an illusion, real magic. Moses and Elijah, also in their spiritual forms, joined them and talked to Jesus. Then they heard the voice of God Saying, “This is my son, the beloved. Listen to him.” They had ears, but they didn’t listen. They still didn’t get it. Peter wanted them to stay there forever. He said, “It is good that we are here. Let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Now Jesus had explained more than once and very recently that before he could become glorified, he had to suffer and die. Here he was just giving them a preview, so they would know how things would turn out. Jesus said, “We can’t stay here. I have to go to Jerusalem and face my destiny. You and the others have to continue the mission. We’ve got to go down the mountain and get back to work!”

The disciples are us. Granted, most of us don’t get magic shows on mountaintops, but God is revealed to us all the time, and too often, we have eyes that can’t see, ears that can’t hear, and minds that are too filled with the busyness of our lives to see and hear and feel the magic that God does everyday. There is a wonderful novel, Silence, about a missionary in Sixteenth Century Japan who has so many terrible things happen to him, he is convinced that God has abandoned him. He goes out into the darkness and cries out to God, “Why are you silent?” Meanwhile, the crickets are chirping, the waves are crashing on the shore, the breeze is on his face. He missed it.

I miss it all the time. I used to take 78 east to work, and there was a group of trees off to the left, just past Stone Mountain, that were so beautiful in the fall. I would look forward to the changing of the leaves, and just seeing those beautiful trees would lift me up. But one year, during the winter, I looked up and realized I had missed fall. For the whole season, my mind was consumed by what I had to get done at work. I missed it.

God is revealed to us a thousand times a day. When you come home exhausted from a long day, and your dog treats you like you have been gone a week, and doesn’t get an inch from you all evening. In the way your kitty nudges you awake in the morning. We’ve got our own little hill top right here! Look around. Becky is walking. Bill did not need the will I hand wrote for him in the hospital. Folks who didn’t have jobs last month or last year have jobs now. People who had left us have come back. New people have joined us and gotten right to work. Singles have become couples. Couples have remained couples. Marisa has grown from our baby girl into our beautiful pre-teen, and we celebrated her baptism on that little hill in December. This mom had her own little epiphany with her children on that hill there in November. If you were here about this time last February, then you have truly witnessed God’s magic. We are a miracle. We have gone from catastrophe and confusion, through blaming and division, to forgiveness and second chances. Not only are we still standing; we are planning our future together!

When Jesus brought the disciples down the mountain, they immediately got back to work helping to spread God’s magic to everyone they met, even if they didn’t completely understand it. And the Bible says that’s what we are supposed to do too. There are so many folks who have been swallowed up by the darkness of worry, despair, illness, addiction, and loneliness. They need help finding their way back to the light of God’s love. And we can be their eyes and ears until they are strong enough to see and hear God’s magic for themselves. We may fumble and stumble as much as the disciples did. But that’s OK. We’re human. And humans can never fully know the ways of God. But as long as we understand that epiphanies don’t just happen on mountaintops, but everywhere because God is everywhere, when we open our eyes and ears and hearts to the magic God is doing around us, and we help others do the same, we’re on the path God has made for us. Amen.